1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns paint applicators such as paint rollers and paint pads.
2. Description of the Related Art
For a history of paint rollers, see Wahl: "Neuentwicklungen bei Farbrollern" Die Mappe 6/88, pp. 23-27. It says that the first paint rollers had lambskin covers but that today almost equal quality can be attained at lower cost with woven and knitted polyamide or polyester fibers and that the best of these is a woven plush of polyamide spun fibers. For painting large areas with latex paints, the pile heights may be from 12 to 25 mm. The roll body or core of the paint roller is usually a cardboard impregnated by a plastic material, and strips of the pile fabric are diagonally wound onto and firmly adhered to the core. U.S. Pat. No. 4,692,975 (Garcia) shows equipment for helically winding a cover fabric onto a thermoplastic tubular core and fusing the fabric to the core.
The Wahl publication points out that fiber-deep cleaning of paint roller covers is a prerequisite for achieving a sufficiently long useful life and a good coating quality. Wahl says that this can be done manually but that better cleaning is provided by a device which rotates the roll rapidly while a stream of water is directed against the roll, thus centrifuging the paint out of the cover material.
Instead of a fabric cover, some paint rollers employ an elastomeric open-cell foam. One such cover is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,378,900 (Adams) which calls it "a sleeve of resilient sponge rubber" or "absorbent sponge rubber covering or sleeve" without further description except that it preferably is synthetic rubber for durability and for easier cleaning. A similar "foam rubber or foam plastic" paint roller is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,972,158 (Voskresenski).
U.S. Pat. No. 2,411,842 (Adams) describes a paint roller cover that is a composite of a pile fabric and an underlying "layer of relatively soft and yielding rubber, preferably a layer of sponge rubber" (col. 2, lines 44-46). The "sponge rubber forms a cushioning medium beneath the fabric layer . . . (that) enables the roller to adapt itself more readily to irregularities in the surface being coated . . . Some of the paint or coating material with which the device is used may pass through the fabric layer 20 and enter the cells of the sponge rubber layer 21 thereby increasing the paint-carrying capacity of the roller" (col. lines 12-32).
A paint roller for use in corners is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,159,905 (Baggett, Jr.).
Among other types of paint applicators are brushes that typically have handles with a flexible elastic extension, and an elastomeric open-cell foam forms an envelop around the extension. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,155,139 (Corcoran). Another type is a mitten which fits a painter's hand and typically is made of a fabric pile, the base of which has been made impervious to paint.